Over the course of the opening lessons in this strand you will research major parties' manifestoes and their aims. You will also go on to come up with your own new political parties, and we will hold a debate and election with these new parties!

below the line you will find links to the 2010 manifestoes, party websites and news sources on the policies of the following political parties: Tories/Conservatives; Labour (still the big two, but both struggling to win an overall majority and losing votes to smaller parties); Lib Dems (will they lose most of their seats in 2015?); UKIP (the wild card in 2015?); Greens (could take seats from Labour, + maybe more votes than Lib Dems?); and two fringe parties as further examples: George Galloway's Respect Party and the pro-piracy/anti-copyright Pirate Party

Use some of the following links to help you with your initial research (hold in the CTRLorCMD button when clicking a link and it will open in a new tab/window so you don't have to keep going back) - you can also look for more options yourself using key search terms such as (party name) manifesto and policy (or polic*):